Overview and CQC Inspections

OverallGood

Our inspector's description of this service

Last updated 6 March 2019
The inspection:

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team:

There was one inspector.

Service and service type: This service is a domiciliary care agency. It provides personal care to people living in their own houses and flats. It provides a service to older adults and disabled adults.

The service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection:

We gave the service 24 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because the service is small and the manager is often out of the office supporting staff. We needed to be sure that they would be in.

Inspection site visit activity started on 12 February 2019 and ended on the same day. We visited the office location to see the manager and other staff there, and to review care records and policies and procedures.

What we did:

before inspection we looked at:

¿ The Provider Information Return. Providers are required to send us key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections.

¿ Notifications we received from the service during and after inspection:

¿ We spoke with one person who used the service

¿ We looked at one person’s care records

¿ We looked at records of safeguarding, accidents, incidents and complaints

¿ Audits and quality assurance reports

¿ We spoke with four members of staff; one carer, one care manager, the registered manager and the director of the service.

Inspection ratings

We rate most services according to how safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led they are, using four levels:

Outstanding – the service is performing exceptionally well.

Good – the service is performing well and meeting our expectations.

Requires improvement – the service isn't performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.

Inadequate – the service is performing badly and we've taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.

No rating/under appeal/rating suspended – there are some services which we can’t rate, while some might be under appeal from the provider. Suspended ratings are being reviewed by us and will be published soon.

Ticks and crosses

We don't rate every type of service. For services we haven't rated we use ticks and crosses to show whether we've asked them to take further action or taken enforcement action against them.

There's no need for the service to take further action. If this service has not had a CQC inspection since it registered with us, our judgement may be based on our assessment of declarations and evidence supplied by the service.

The service must make improvements.

At least one standard in this area was not being met when we inspected the service and we have taken enforcement action.